Latest / Ridiculous History / That Time New York Banned Spitting

Transcript

That Time New York Banned Spitting · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
0:31
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Uh. Today's show has so many
0:37
Speaker 1: spit takes, so many terrible opportunities for puns. I'm Ben Noll.
0:43
Speaker 1: I think people should not lower their expectations for this
0:45
Speaker 1: show today. But maybe they should lower their expectorations. Oh yes,
0:52
Speaker 1: it is I Ben Noel, Uh, and I'm thoroughly grossed
0:56
Speaker 1: out after reading about this. Uh. Today, you're gonna get
0:59
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. You're gonna get spewed um You're
1:02
Speaker 1: gonna get spewed um cups. You're gonna get expectorants on
1:06
Speaker 1: the floor of street cars. You're gonna get tuberculosis droplets
1:12
Speaker 1: spreading disease all across the land. Because you know what, Ben,
1:15
Speaker 1: there's one thing we can take away from this show
1:18
Speaker 1: all by and large, all in is that people are gross.
1:22
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. As a matter of fact, one
1:25
Speaker 1: of the only non gross people we know, super producer
1:28
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, is actually not going to be on this
1:32
Speaker 1: show today. Oh Ben, what a horrid a fake out
1:35
Speaker 1: he said. He says it's because he's making some major moves.
1:40
Speaker 1: But I think at least part of this is because
1:42
Speaker 1: Casey is not a fan of spittle, drool, slabber was
1:48
Speaker 1: the other word spud um? Yeah, yeah, expectorant, flegm uh
1:55
Speaker 1: Lugis I like that too? Um? Yeah, there's a you know,
1:59
Speaker 1: a rose by any of the name would be as
2:02
Speaker 1: gross um. And today we're talking about all of these things,
2:06
Speaker 1: uh in terms of the tuberculosis epidemic of the late
2:11
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Yeah, yep, that's correct. If you lived in
2:15
Speaker 1: early twentieth century America, the leading cause of death in
2:20
Speaker 1: your country was not heart attack, right, It wasn't a
2:22
Speaker 1: cardiac cardiovascular stuff. It wasn't uh something like cancer. Instead,
2:28
Speaker 1: it was tuberculosis. And the public health experts of the
2:33
Speaker 1: time were aware that spitting could become, you know, co
2:39
Speaker 1: function as a vector of contagions. So today's story is
2:45
Speaker 1: about uh spitting. Shout out to Gabe Louisier, by the way,
2:49
Speaker 1: because he did a little a little title in the
2:52
Speaker 1: research here that I love of poop and politics prologue.
2:57
Speaker 1: That's right. Um. It turns out, you know, I know
3:00
Speaker 1: how you feel. I don't love I like a good
3:02
Speaker 1: spitch as much as the next person, something a little
3:04
Speaker 1: satisfying about it, but not something you would typically do
3:07
Speaker 1: in in polite company. Uh. Not the case. In the
3:10
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds, it was like super popular. There was
3:14
Speaker 1: like a like a spit culture almost. Um. Men would
3:18
Speaker 1: spit in like courtrooms, inside buildings, on street cars there
3:23
Speaker 1: would apparently be like puddles of like spit on the
3:27
Speaker 1: floor of street cars a k A. You know, like
3:30
Speaker 1: what do you call those like like trolleys, right, isn't
3:32
Speaker 1: that what a street car has been? Sure? Yeah, yeah,
3:34
Speaker 1: and to the point where women's dresses were always in
3:37
Speaker 1: danger of like dragging through this disgusting dribble um. But
3:43
Speaker 1: here's the thing. In the late eighteen hundreds, courtrooms were
3:47
Speaker 1: considered like off limits for for proper ladies. That's because
3:53
Speaker 1: the men would be, you know, in there milling around,
3:56
Speaker 1: smoking their cigars and spitting willie nilly um. And women
4:01
Speaker 1: this this would be a site that would you know,
4:03
Speaker 1: cause a fine lady to clutch her very pearls um.
4:07
Speaker 1: And you know, unless of course that woman was a
4:10
Speaker 1: sex worker or something like that. Again, this is just
4:14
Speaker 1: me kind of like uh summarizing the parlance of of
4:17
Speaker 1: the day. Uh, Felice Batien is a law professor in
4:21
Speaker 1: legal historian at the Chicago Kent College of Law said,
4:25
Speaker 1: a fine woman did not appear in court. Yeah, given
4:29
Speaker 1: the given the widespread pretty blatant misogyny of the time,
4:34
Speaker 1: the concept of being a sex worker was also equated
4:39
Speaker 1: with being an actor or the an actress they would
4:42
Speaker 1: have said at that time, or a dancer, And so
4:46
Speaker 1: this was a place where people of low reputation went
4:49
Speaker 1: if they were women. Uh, the only the only way
4:53
Speaker 1: a respected female member of society would be in court
4:56
Speaker 1: is if they were a victim or a witness and
4:59
Speaker 1: all ways. You know. Unfortunately, women were victimized. Their honor
5:04
Speaker 1: was on trial in these cases as well, and things started.
5:08
Speaker 1: Something weird happened. In eighteen eighty four, newspapers went public
5:13
Speaker 1: with the story that a group of women from Manhattan
5:17
Speaker 1: had delivered documentation wrapped up like a present with a
5:21
Speaker 1: bow to a grand jury. This is also according to
5:26
Speaker 1: some of Batlan's work in Akron Law Review. These women
5:30
Speaker 1: were members of the Ladies Health Protective Association or HIPPA,
5:34
Speaker 1: which kind of sounds like a hawk lookie sound on
5:37
Speaker 1: its own clip. Yeah, right, they were bringing h lawsuit
5:44
Speaker 1: against the guy named Michael Kang. Not the same guy.
5:47
Speaker 1: It's a K A N E. For his surname, Michael Kine. Uh.
5:52
Speaker 1: The reason they were bringing his suit against Mike is
5:54
Speaker 1: because he owned this gigantic manure dump in their neighborhood.
5:59
Speaker 1: And well, we say gigantic nole? How big are we talking?
6:02
Speaker 1: Like several city blocks? If I'm not mistaken, Uh, you know,
6:06
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just for fun. It was like apparently
6:09
Speaker 1: quite the money maker, quite the earner, this manure dump,
6:13
Speaker 1: because he had like I think upwards of a hundred
6:15
Speaker 1: employees that would go around collect all the poop from
6:18
Speaker 1: various stables around you know, the city, and then dump
6:22
Speaker 1: it in this giant manure dump and then they'd sell
6:25
Speaker 1: he'd sell it as fertilizer. And I saw a figure
6:27
Speaker 1: that said it generated something like three hundred k a
6:30
Speaker 1: year in late eighteen hundreds dollars. What's that inflation calculates
6:35
Speaker 1: to ben eight million dollars today, nol, It's eight million
6:46
Speaker 1: dollars worth of fertilizer. You know what I mean? That's
6:49
Speaker 1: that's a lot of my friend pooping gets, you know. Indeed, Uh,
6:55
Speaker 1: so this you're right, it's it's huge to city blocks,
6:58
Speaker 1: thirty ft tall. It's eight million dollars worth of poop,
7:03
Speaker 1: which reminds me it's like a very gross real world
7:06
Speaker 1: example of that. Uh that that sketch and the excellent
7:10
Speaker 1: sketch show the State with Barry and Lavan and two
7:13
Speaker 1: hundred and forty dollars worth of pudding. Do you remember
7:15
Speaker 1: that one? Yes, I do remember that one. Yeah, it's
7:17
Speaker 1: a lot of pudding. Um. But you know that's the
7:20
Speaker 1: thing that there weren't the kinds of health codes that
7:24
Speaker 1: we have today that would prevent something like this from
7:27
Speaker 1: just being out in the open um. People would capitalize
7:30
Speaker 1: on that. I mean it was cities in general during
7:34
Speaker 1: these of this period were absolutely disgusting. There would be
7:37
Speaker 1: flowing suage through the streets like dead animal carcasses littered
7:41
Speaker 1: everywhere you look. Again, the spitting, the you know, just
7:45
Speaker 1: the absolute imagine the smell. We talked about the big
7:48
Speaker 1: Stink of London. You know, this would be in that
7:50
Speaker 1: same vein. So this package delivered to the Grand Jury
7:54
Speaker 1: literally wrapped in a bow from the Ladies Health Protective
7:57
Speaker 1: Association or CLiPPA as you say, l A p a um.
8:01
Speaker 1: They were suing this gentleman because they claimed in in
8:04
Speaker 1: the documentation that the smell was very disagreeable. It actually
8:09
Speaker 1: kind of escalated. It went from very disagreeable to perfectly
8:12
Speaker 1: frightful and then finally simply unendurable. Um. Well, which was it, ladies.
8:17
Speaker 1: I'm sorry not to not to be a stickler here. Um.
8:19
Speaker 1: But they claimed they could not open their windows to
8:22
Speaker 1: enjoy the fresh air, which admittedly probably wouldn't have been
8:24
Speaker 1: super fresh to begin with, but probably would have been
8:27
Speaker 1: better off without the giant pile of horse manure. They
8:31
Speaker 1: also felt as though it posed a danger to the
8:34
Speaker 1: health of their families. Uh. And they just they they
8:37
Speaker 1: classified it. And this is a real thing, very real thing,
8:40
Speaker 1: continues to be today in the legal system as a
8:44
Speaker 1: public nuisance. Yeah, this is important because this puts you
8:48
Speaker 1: a legal framework. A public nuisance is a real thing
8:52
Speaker 1: in uh litigation. So the basic argument here is that
8:58
Speaker 1: if you were calling something to public nuisance, you're saying
9:01
Speaker 1: the offending activity ruins other people's ability to enjoy their stuff,
9:06
Speaker 1: their land, their property. These were really common in the
9:09
Speaker 1: twentieth century or at the turn of the twentieth century.
9:12
Speaker 1: Because of industrialization, we're seeing huge factories. We're seeing railroads,
9:17
Speaker 1: were seeing all the sounds, the smells, the gas and
9:20
Speaker 1: the and all the pollutants right that are washing up
9:24
Speaker 1: on the edges of residential neighborhoods. This is not the
9:27
Speaker 1: first time Michael Caine had faced accusations of this sort.
9:33
Speaker 1: The thing is he never really got in trouble. The
9:36
Speaker 1: really never stuck to him because his brother in law
9:39
Speaker 1: was a New York State senator. So at the time
9:42
Speaker 1: people suspected there was some corruption. And this was not
9:45
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. This was this was pretty plausible. So therefore,
9:50
Speaker 1: the hip people they have, they're fighting on two fronts.
9:54
Speaker 1: One they have to fight off the filth in the
9:56
Speaker 1: city streets, but then they have to fight off the
9:59
Speaker 1: figurative phil of corruption in the political system. And so
10:04
Speaker 1: they do a really clever marketing campaign and their group grows.
10:09
Speaker 1: So it starts with like a Baker's dozen of concerned citizens,
10:12
Speaker 1: and then it gets to almost three hundred members between
10:16
Speaker 1: the time of the grand jury and the time that
10:18
Speaker 1: king actually goes to court. And this is all prologue.
10:22
Speaker 1: We're getting to the spitting part. But you need to
10:24
Speaker 1: know this part first, and to make a long story short,
10:27
Speaker 1: this was an effective tactic, you know, organizing into this
10:31
Speaker 1: you know, safety and numbers, I guess, and like it
10:33
Speaker 1: was clearly there were a lot of people that had
10:35
Speaker 1: skin in this game. The establishment, let's call it, tried
10:38
Speaker 1: to kind of gaslight this group out of existence by
10:40
Speaker 1: calling them a bunch of crazy dames you know, uh,
10:44
Speaker 1: dainty and picky you know, oh, my goodness, such terms
10:47
Speaker 1: of abuse. It doesn't like a good poop my ass.
10:49
Speaker 1: But exactly everybody, um, you know, and and they were
10:53
Speaker 1: being irrational, unreasonable women. God, the misogyny is about as
10:59
Speaker 1: thick as the smell of that manure pile. Um. And
11:02
Speaker 1: but but it worked, you know, gaslighting be damned. The
11:05
Speaker 1: nearly three dred members of the l h p A
11:08
Speaker 1: not only got the manure pile uh you know, deep six,
11:14
Speaker 1: they also took it a little further. They were able
11:16
Speaker 1: to there apparently was a Board of Health condoms what
11:19
Speaker 1: they were actually doing if they were allowing manure piles
11:22
Speaker 1: that is flourished. But they did pressure the Board of
11:24
Speaker 1: Health to deny any future permits for manure dumps within
11:28
Speaker 1: the city limits. That seems just like beyond reasonable, well
11:32
Speaker 1: fun fact, at this point Board of Health did have
11:35
Speaker 1: quotation marks around health. That's that's a fact. Until the
11:38
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. Nobody check it. Nobody just accept that way anyway. Yeah,
11:44
Speaker 1: this is there. There's an interesting subversion of these socio
11:48
Speaker 1: economic roles that women were thrust in at the time,
11:52
Speaker 1: because the traditional expectation at this time in the late
11:54
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds is still like you were a woman's you
11:58
Speaker 1: have to be in the kitchen, have to be doing laundry,
12:01
Speaker 1: you keep house and leave the outside stuff to the dudes.
12:04
Speaker 1: But what they did is flipped the script in a
12:07
Speaker 1: in a very real and impactful way, and they said,
12:11
Speaker 1: you know, think of us as like, think of the
12:14
Speaker 1: city as the house that we keep. We are municipal housekeepers.
12:19
Speaker 1: So now that we have our victory over this gigantic
12:22
Speaker 1: mound of crap in our neighborhood, let's fight other health concerns.
12:29
Speaker 1: And they weren't doing this for reasons of ego or
12:33
Speaker 1: reasons of adventure seeking. They were doing this because, as
12:38
Speaker 1: as we pointed out earlier in the eighteen hundreds, cities
12:42
Speaker 1: were just disgusting places, at least in the West. I
12:46
Speaker 1: mean carcasses of dead animals. Of course, but also people
12:49
Speaker 1: are openly defecating in the streets. The rise of tenement
12:54
Speaker 1: buildings has led to a ton of overcrowding. And when
12:59
Speaker 1: there's a lot of over crowding and there's not a
13:01
Speaker 1: lot of hygiene, what spreads disease? What's the most dangerous disease?
13:06
Speaker 1: We mentioned it at the very top of the show. Tuberculosis.
13:10
Speaker 1: It was raging like wildfire. Yeah, that's the one you'll
13:13
Speaker 1: surely know from you know films, uh to Tombstone. Sure, yeah, yeah,
13:18
Speaker 1: you'll will dry cough into the hanky and you pull
13:22
Speaker 1: it away and there's blood. It's this classic movie trope
13:25
Speaker 1: where you know someone has TV also beautifully used um
13:29
Speaker 1: and subverted in an interesting way in the movie Parasite.
13:32
Speaker 1: Highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen that check it out immediately.
13:36
Speaker 1: But yeah, tuberculosis was running wide, rife, rough shot all
13:41
Speaker 1: over the poor citizens of these you know, teeming metropolis.
13:45
Speaker 1: Is right, and it spreads the same way our behoved
13:49
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen spreads through those droplets that are airsolized when
13:54
Speaker 1: a person coughs or sneezes, and it just kind of
13:57
Speaker 1: hangs in the air, and people that walk through that
13:59
Speaker 1: you know, sneeze cloud um can breathe it in and
14:03
Speaker 1: then they become infective. This was in the nineteenth century,
14:08
Speaker 1: tuberculosis the single leading cause of death among New Yorkers.
14:14
Speaker 1: And that's according to Anne Garner, who is a curator
14:17
Speaker 1: of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the New York Academy
14:20
Speaker 1: of Medicine Library and also the co curator of the
14:23
Speaker 1: Museum of the City of New York's exhibition Germ City
14:27
Speaker 1: Microbes and the Metropolis germ City. It feels like it's
14:32
Speaker 1: a it's a kiss song. Yeah. Yeah. The levity aside,
14:39
Speaker 1: the stats are sobered and terrified. Uh. Tuberculosis killed one
14:44
Speaker 1: in every seven people in Europe and the US over
14:47
Speaker 1: the span of the nineteenth century, and this problem was
14:50
Speaker 1: even worse if you were a city dweller. Just between
14:53
Speaker 1: eighteen ten and eighteen fifteen, the space of five years, tuberculosis,
14:57
Speaker 1: which was then known as consumpted was responsible for about
15:03
Speaker 1: of the recorded deaths in the Big Apple and about
15:08
Speaker 1: two years before the before lip Fought Poop Mountain, which
15:13
Speaker 1: I'm just going to call that now, there was a
15:15
Speaker 1: German bacteriologist named Robert Coke who had figured out the
15:21
Speaker 1: germ responsible for tuberculosis. It's myso Bacterium tuberculosis. And he
15:28
Speaker 1: had he had isolated this, he had taken some samples.
15:31
Speaker 1: He would go on to win the Nobel Prize a
15:34
Speaker 1: few years later for his work here. And he figured
15:38
Speaker 1: out how this stuff was spreading. He said, consumption is
15:42
Speaker 1: not just some miasthma. It's not just hanging out with
15:45
Speaker 1: people are shaking hands. It's when the flym and spit
15:51
Speaker 1: that you cough up is transmitted by you know, like
15:55
Speaker 1: or uh, into the air and around other people. And
16:00
Speaker 1: this meant in his mind, public spitting or expectoration expectorating
16:06
Speaker 1: is spreading the disease. We get we should pause your
16:08
Speaker 1: um because you know, there's a stereotype about the South,
16:12
Speaker 1: which is that a lot of people in the rural
16:14
Speaker 1: South are always hawking and spitting. Have you run into
16:18
Speaker 1: that stereotype. Well, I think part of it, Ben might
16:21
Speaker 1: be because of I've never really seen it much outside
16:25
Speaker 1: of the South. But you know, dip tobacco or you know,
16:28
Speaker 1: you hold it in your lip and you literally spit
16:31
Speaker 1: disgusting brown tobacco juice, uh, you know, in a cup,
16:35
Speaker 1: still gross, but sometimes just you know, and on the ground.
16:39
Speaker 1: Baseball players do it, or they don't anymore. I think
16:41
Speaker 1: they used to, and it was like kind of like
16:43
Speaker 1: frowned upon, and now it's supposed that they're just supposed
16:45
Speaker 1: to choot gum. But yeah, I've definitely known some uh
16:48
Speaker 1: some some some good old boy types that like a
16:51
Speaker 1: good tobacco dip here and there. I think that's probably
16:54
Speaker 1: largely where that reputation comes from. UM. But it turns
16:57
Speaker 1: out not really a Southern thing at all. It was
16:59
Speaker 1: much more of like a like a city thing, like
17:02
Speaker 1: a New York thing. Like I was staying at the
17:03
Speaker 1: top of the show. I mean, people would just spit
17:05
Speaker 1: everywhere inside courthouses, you know, on the street, cars on
17:09
Speaker 1: the street, you know. Um, and it was just kind
17:11
Speaker 1: of accepted, and it was like it was almost like
17:14
Speaker 1: considered like a civil right to be able to spit
17:17
Speaker 1: in public. You know. It's it's it's always gonna say, expectorated.
17:21
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's still normal in part various parts of
17:25
Speaker 1: the world because there are these longstanding um medical beliefs
17:29
Speaker 1: or medicinal beliefs, and the idea that is your if
17:32
Speaker 1: your body is generating this stuff, you have to spit
17:35
Speaker 1: it out for your health. So you'll go to different
17:37
Speaker 1: parts of the world where it's just very, very casually
17:40
Speaker 1: people are spitting in the streets. But you're right, Uh,
17:43
Speaker 1: you're right. This is not this is not just a
17:46
Speaker 1: Southern thing. Don't be fooled by the stereotypes. Rampant public
17:50
Speaker 1: spitting is spreading tuberculosis. There's a reason that one in
17:55
Speaker 1: seven people are dying of this disease. When Coke links tuberculosis,
18:02
Speaker 1: this particular infection, to this particular bacterium, he kind of
18:07
Speaker 1: tease up public health organizations and movements to try to
18:13
Speaker 1: to focus in on spitting as a way of preventing
18:16
Speaker 1: the spread of tuberculosis. So this is where we go
18:21
Speaker 1: back to New York. Like you said, man, like we said,
18:25
Speaker 1: of the top like cities are cities or ground zero
18:28
Speaker 1: for this infection. There's no cure for it at this point,
18:32
Speaker 1: but New York has the distinction of becoming the first
18:37
Speaker 1: city to fight tuberculosis by banning spitting. I don't like,
18:43
Speaker 1: I know, we have to talk about how this came about,
18:45
Speaker 1: but I'm also really interested to learn how it was enforced.
18:48
Speaker 1: How do you just do you just watch everybody? Yeah,
18:51
Speaker 1: and once again the Ladies Health Protective Association comes to
18:55
Speaker 1: the rescue with their you know, their numbers thriving at
18:59
Speaker 1: this point. Um, just want to point out too, this
19:01
Speaker 1: is pre women's suffrage. So like I mean, not only
19:05
Speaker 1: are women disrespected, not allowed in the courthouse whatever, you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: the whole like all the misogyny behind be a proper
19:11
Speaker 1: lady and all that. Um, they can't even actually vote.
19:15
Speaker 1: So these types of women's collectives and groups affecting actual change,
19:22
Speaker 1: uh is a big deal because they didn't even have
19:24
Speaker 1: the right to vote. This is the only way they
19:25
Speaker 1: could make their voices heard. And this is a very
19:29
Speaker 1: lasting legacy, as we'll be able to see, because they
19:32
Speaker 1: tackled this tuberculosis epidemic head on by targeting the spinning.
19:37
Speaker 1: And this wasn't something that was on the radar of
19:40
Speaker 1: like even just the actual officials in quote unquote public
19:44
Speaker 1: health or quotes around the health as you said, Ben,
19:47
Speaker 1: So they were able to uh kind of lobby groups
19:52
Speaker 1: like Brooklyn's Anti Tuberculosis Committee and the National Tuberculosis Association
19:57
Speaker 1: to get some of these protective measures in play, think
20:00
Speaker 1: mask mandates only. This is like a step further. I
20:03
Speaker 1: mean it's you know, wearing a mask is annoying, but
20:06
Speaker 1: how hard is it to not spit? You know, that's
20:08
Speaker 1: something that we can all do to contribute. Really surprised
20:11
Speaker 1: actually hasn't been more of a discussion around COVID. But
20:14
Speaker 1: I guess the thing is, it's just not This is
20:16
Speaker 1: really like a spitting epidemic when people were just doing
20:20
Speaker 1: it left right, and there was absolutely a part of
20:22
Speaker 1: like the culture. Um. So yeah, they start, they make
20:27
Speaker 1: some headway, and they're able to get a city ordinance
20:30
Speaker 1: past that made expectoration illegal in public. And along with
20:36
Speaker 1: that comes a very kind of clever ad campaign, the
20:40
Speaker 1: idea of be where the careless spitter. There's something I
20:49
Speaker 1: want to stop in highlight here because there are other ways.
20:53
Speaker 1: Student listeners fellow ridiculous of his story and will notice
20:56
Speaker 1: there are other ways of spreading these kinds of infections
20:59
Speaker 1: whenever or the human body is emitting something an aerosol
21:03
Speaker 1: for so coffee, right uh, And we'll get into how
21:07
Speaker 1: how this works with tuberculosis. Sneezing. Those are two things
21:11
Speaker 1: that also can spread this stuff, but they're not they're
21:16
Speaker 1: not the focus of the campaign because unlike coughing and
21:19
Speaker 1: Unlike sneezing, spitting is a voluntary You don't just accidentally
21:25
Speaker 1: pooh and hit the spatun um. And I'm still thinking
21:29
Speaker 1: of that character in American Tale to five Will Goes West.
21:33
Speaker 1: There's a spitting thing in there. I can't remember. I look, well,
21:36
Speaker 1: there's a lot of spitting things and cartoons like around
21:39
Speaker 1: the Old West with bugs, money and stuff and all.
21:41
Speaker 1: Every time they hit that spatoon it always makes like
21:45
Speaker 1: a nice, little satisfying ping sound. I think I think
21:49
Speaker 1: for most of us growing up, seeing those cartoons is
21:52
Speaker 1: the closest we got the scene spittoons. But but that's
21:55
Speaker 1: because we have the benefit of being alive in a
21:58
Speaker 1: time after this campaign, Because you know, there were all
22:03
Speaker 1: these things, like you said, there was pr literature, borderline
22:06
Speaker 1: propaganda stuff that said things like spending is the aerised,
22:10
Speaker 1: some decent and against the law, no spit, no consumption,
22:14
Speaker 1: And you would walk around and you'd see posters that
22:17
Speaker 1: talked about the dangers and the low nature spitting. But
22:22
Speaker 1: they didn't just talk about spitting. They had other things
22:24
Speaker 1: that they warned about. So they were talking about how
22:28
Speaker 1: you also shouldn't be drunk in public, which when you
22:31
Speaker 1: think about it would be a good way to stem
22:33
Speaker 1: the tide of tuberculosis at least a little bit. Because
22:36
Speaker 1: people are drinking and they're used to spitting, They're probably
22:39
Speaker 1: not going to see a poster and stop when they're inebriated.
22:42
Speaker 1: So they have all these different warnings, but at first
22:46
Speaker 1: they don't really work because people still are spitting left
22:51
Speaker 1: and right. It's intractable. It's a New York habit. Hey
22:53
Speaker 1: it's a big apple, I'm walking, I'm spitting here. It's
22:58
Speaker 1: it really does remind me of the whole math thing.
23:00
Speaker 1: And what it requires is kind of shifting enough of
23:03
Speaker 1: the public sentiment to make, you know, the majority of
23:06
Speaker 1: people shame the minority of people who want to continue
23:09
Speaker 1: to do whatever they want to do, right. Same with
23:11
Speaker 1: the masks. You know, once you have businesses signing up
23:14
Speaker 1: and not let the people come in if they don't
23:15
Speaker 1: wear the mask, then people start paying attention. Or once
23:19
Speaker 1: you have enough people giving this the you know, uh
23:22
Speaker 1: side eye to folks that aren't wearing the mask, then
23:25
Speaker 1: people maybe start paying attention. Um. Again, it seems to
23:29
Speaker 1: be like such a voluntary thing spitting that you could
23:32
Speaker 1: just easily stop, especially if you thought maybe it would
23:35
Speaker 1: help keepople from getting sick. But as we know, people
23:37
Speaker 1: are very stubborn and stuck in their ways, so it
23:40
Speaker 1: required taking it a little further with things like like fines,
23:45
Speaker 1: levying like significant fines, like a buck at the time,
23:47
Speaker 1: which would have been around thirty bucks today. Uh, still
23:50
Speaker 1: seems pretty minor, but at least it's something, right, Yeah,
23:55
Speaker 1: there's there's also the formation of this thing called the
23:59
Speaker 1: sanitary Wad. They're like like Ghostbusters, but spit busters, and
24:04
Speaker 1: they would round up hundreds of people at one time
24:07
Speaker 1: and bringing them to court where they would get where
24:10
Speaker 1: they would get these fines, which you said, you know,
24:13
Speaker 1: they're on average actually a little less than a dollar.
24:16
Speaker 1: But we have to keep in mind in eighteen ninety six,
24:19
Speaker 1: one dollar was the equivalent of thirty bucks today, so
24:22
Speaker 1: it's still a hassle and you're still dragged the court
24:24
Speaker 1: and you still have to pay thirty bucks. So all
24:28
Speaker 1: in all, between eighteen nineteen ten, there were more than
24:32
Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred people arrested under this no spitting statute,
24:37
Speaker 1: and New York was going really hard on the paint.
24:41
Speaker 1: There are other there were other cities that had something
24:44
Speaker 1: like this, but New York was far far and above
24:49
Speaker 1: the main city enforcing this, at least in terms of
24:53
Speaker 1: arrests like numbers, and they were, yeah, that's what I
24:56
Speaker 1: mean by enforcing. In nineteen ten, the n T a
24:59
Speaker 1: National Old Tuberculosis Association said less than half of the
25:05
Speaker 1: city's in the US with any kind of anti spitting
25:08
Speaker 1: law actually enforced it. It was kind of like the way,
25:12
Speaker 1: what's another law that's not often for jaywalking isn't enforced
25:15
Speaker 1: in a lot of cities. How are you gonna do it?
25:18
Speaker 1: That's right? And um it it continued to be a
25:22
Speaker 1: pretty divisive issue, uh, letters to the editors, you know, um,
25:28
Speaker 1: public kind of forums and discussions. There was a lot
25:32
Speaker 1: of resistance to it. Again, like I said, saying that
25:35
Speaker 1: it was somehow uh you know, like a boot on
25:38
Speaker 1: the neck of people's individual freedoms. Um, especially as the
25:44
Speaker 1: punishments got a little harsher and they were like you know,
25:47
Speaker 1: raids on subway platforms where they would round up groups
25:50
Speaker 1: of spinners. Everytime I say spinner, I think of that
25:52
Speaker 1: de la Fasaurus dinosaur from Jurassic Park. You know, they
25:55
Speaker 1: called it the spinner. Um. That would have been a
25:57
Speaker 1: cool mascot for an anti spitting campaign in in in
26:00
Speaker 1: our modern times. I don't think they knew it existed. No, no, probably,
26:04
Speaker 1: I'm saying our mind, if we if we were going
26:05
Speaker 1: to launch this again, which I am all about, I think,
26:08
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that we should revisit. But
26:10
Speaker 1: the l h P a H handed out literature to
26:13
Speaker 1: try to educate people about why this is like good
26:17
Speaker 1: for you, this is good for everyone, and attitudes began
26:19
Speaker 1: to change. Because their campaigns were effective, Spinning became seen
26:24
Speaker 1: as unsanitary and gross and just plain rude and uh,
26:29
Speaker 1: an actual kind of affront to to civilized society, right, Ben, Yeah,
26:34
Speaker 1: that's correct. So we see, we see this this kind
26:39
Speaker 1: of contrary and faction rise up and say that this
26:43
Speaker 1: is an affront to personal liberty. Uh. They warned that
26:47
Speaker 1: this is going to lead to some kind of dystopian
26:51
Speaker 1: big Brother's situation, although they didn't have the phrase big
26:54
Speaker 1: brother at that point. And they also go so far
26:58
Speaker 1: as to say, well, well the science isn't really there,
27:02
Speaker 1: so uh, CLiPPA and some other places fight back. They
27:07
Speaker 1: they write a more literature, they create these slogans, They
27:11
Speaker 1: go all out on this marketing campaign. They have volunteers
27:15
Speaker 1: cleaning the streets, you know, spit squads, and one spitting
27:20
Speaker 1: is framed as being kind of low class and unsanitary.
27:25
Speaker 1: More and more dudes start thinking, okay, well, it's it's
27:30
Speaker 1: madly and courageous for me to confront these ne'er do
27:34
Speaker 1: wells spitting left and right, expectorated the city is not
27:39
Speaker 1: a spatoon. I imagine them saying that's a great line.
27:42
Speaker 1: I hope one of them said that. Uh. And then
27:45
Speaker 1: city officials started installing spatuns, kind of like the way
27:50
Speaker 1: you would see um, like a smoking section of a
27:54
Speaker 1: place outside. And so they would say, Okay, if you
27:57
Speaker 1: have to spit, then go spit here. And were there
28:00
Speaker 1: people who are like us, spit where I won't. It's
28:03
Speaker 1: my right as a resident of the big spit and Apple. Yeah,
28:07
Speaker 1: there were probably a few, but they were losing the
28:09
Speaker 1: fight of public opinion. We know what, you're all wondering,
28:13
Speaker 1: how effective was this? I don't know. Let's see, let's
28:17
Speaker 1: see how well. It's one of these things where like
28:19
Speaker 1: we know that uh, with the current coronavirus, that the
28:25
Speaker 1: transmission is almost entirely happens through these aerosolized droplets so yeah,
28:32
Speaker 1: sure if if some if you got spit on by somebody,
28:35
Speaker 1: are you happen to catch a fleck of somebody's spit
28:39
Speaker 1: directly in your mouth? I'm sorry, I know that's gross.
28:42
Speaker 1: That'd be bad news. But typically, you know, spitting is
28:46
Speaker 1: is pretty relatively contained. I mean it can you know,
28:49
Speaker 1: infectious diseases can live in spit on non porous surfaces
28:54
Speaker 1: for longer. So but again, but it would require you
28:57
Speaker 1: to like actually physically interact with it and then you know,
29:00
Speaker 1: touch your hand to your mouth or whatever. You'd have
29:02
Speaker 1: to be a really messy spinner, uh, just like you know,
29:06
Speaker 1: to actually aerosolize those droplets and get them in the
29:10
Speaker 1: state that would be the most effective in transmitting the disease.
29:14
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think indirectly it probably had a positive
29:18
Speaker 1: impact on, you know, um, lowering the cases of tuberculosis.
29:23
Speaker 1: But I don't think it was as I don't think
29:25
Speaker 1: spitting was as much of a direct cause of it
29:28
Speaker 1: as people might have thought. Right, yeah, if someone if
29:32
Speaker 1: someone spat in your face at this time, then it
29:37
Speaker 1: could transmit tuberculosis. But if someone spat at your shoe
29:42
Speaker 1: or you know, on the ground and you walked by later,
29:46
Speaker 1: the TV probably would not have been able to assume
29:49
Speaker 1: an aerosol state. Again, it would just be there on
29:52
Speaker 1: the ground in the dirt. Uh. But the thing is,
29:56
Speaker 1: even if this ban on spitting didn't directly reduce transmission
30:00
Speaker 1: of disease, because again, you know, people are still they
30:04
Speaker 1: You can't put a ban on people coughing up this
30:07
Speaker 1: flegm and saliva. That's just a symptom of the infection, right,
30:12
Speaker 1: and something that you need to do to reach yourself up.
30:14
Speaker 1: It's important, like you were saying earlier, like coughing that
30:17
Speaker 1: stuff up is what helps you get better. And the
30:19
Speaker 1: thing is that even if this didn't directly stop TV transmission,
30:27
Speaker 1: it did teach an important lesson in public health. And
30:30
Speaker 1: that's why during the nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen flu pandemic,
30:36
Speaker 1: when the virus the flu virus spread via aerosol transmission, uh,
30:42
Speaker 1: that's why spitting was banned during this infection as well.
30:46
Speaker 1: We knew that spitting played some sort of role, that
30:49
Speaker 1: these things that were being coughed up and emitted from
30:52
Speaker 1: other human beings could be vehicles for infection. So the
30:58
Speaker 1: the spitting ban also probably had an indirect effect help
31:03
Speaker 1: prevent the spread of disease overall, because people weren't spitting,
31:07
Speaker 1: and people were kind of thinking more about public hygiene
31:11
Speaker 1: in general, and you know, it's a it's a good
31:13
Speaker 1: step in the right direction. Still pretty gross, but these
31:15
Speaker 1: things called spittoons like you're saying, or cuspidors, which I
31:19
Speaker 1: love that word UM were installed all around the city
31:23
Speaker 1: and then you would have these little like personal sputium bottles.
31:27
Speaker 1: One popular one was called the Blue Henry. It was
31:30
Speaker 1: made out of cobalt blue glass. UH. It was manufactured
31:33
Speaker 1: by UM, a gentleman by the name of Peter debt
31:36
Speaker 1: Viler who was a German sanatorium pioneer UM who had
31:42
Speaker 1: himself been stricken with tuberculosis. And so these were basically
31:46
Speaker 1: like think of like a flask that you would carry
31:49
Speaker 1: around with you and spit your disgusting flegmen too when
31:54
Speaker 1: your lungs were you know, bothering you or whatever. UM.
31:57
Speaker 1: And it was like almost like an accessory. It became
32:00
Speaker 1: sort of fashionable. You can get them in different sizes
32:02
Speaker 1: and different colors and shapes made of different materials. There
32:06
Speaker 1: would be some that would have like a spring loaded
32:08
Speaker 1: lid on them that could open from both sides, so
32:11
Speaker 1: you could spit into like a little funnel on one
32:13
Speaker 1: side and then unscrew the bottle top to clean it,
32:16
Speaker 1: because these, you know, non perishable ones did have to
32:20
Speaker 1: be cleaned otherwise it would defeat the purpose and they
32:22
Speaker 1: themselves would be a vector of of disease. UM. Then
32:26
Speaker 1: there was like efforts from public health departments to pass
32:30
Speaker 1: out kind of um more disposable speedi um cups right
32:35
Speaker 1: that you would get for free, like when you stepped
32:37
Speaker 1: onto the street car, for example, you might be you
32:40
Speaker 1: might get one past to you. Uh. And they were
32:43
Speaker 1: pretty effective too, so there were still plenty of spitting
32:46
Speaker 1: going on. They just sort of reframed it. But you know,
32:49
Speaker 1: we don't have spittoons today, so I guess people just
32:51
Speaker 1: don't spit as much anymore. You don't hear about things
32:53
Speaker 1: like speed um cups. What gives Ben, Well, let's go back.
32:58
Speaker 1: So we're talking about nineteen six seen a number of
33:00
Speaker 1: cities l A, Boston, Seattle, they're the ones who are they?
33:04
Speaker 1: And other cities are handing out these disposable uh cups
33:08
Speaker 1: their their paper cups. A lot of this information is
33:12
Speaker 1: coming to us courtesy of Shaughnessy Pharaoh over at Mental Flaws,
33:17
Speaker 1: who wrote a great, great article about the anti spitting campaigns.
33:22
Speaker 1: The doctors of the time noted that there was a
33:26
Speaker 1: stark difference between the disposable and reusable cups or flask.
33:31
Speaker 1: The reusable ones have to be cleaned with a strong disinfectant,
33:37
Speaker 1: and they need to be cleaned according to the contemporatingous
33:41
Speaker 1: medical advice, by rinsing them with lie solution and boiling
33:44
Speaker 1: them in water. As for the junk itself, the flim
33:49
Speaker 1: and the gunk, and the drool and the spittle and
33:51
Speaker 1: the lugiosity, I'll just make up that word here, the
33:55
Speaker 1: lugiosity of it. That stuff had to be burned, and
33:58
Speaker 1: anything contaminated with TV had to be learned as well.
34:02
Speaker 1: Shout out to the heartbreaking young adult book The Velveteen Rabbit,
34:07
Speaker 1: which I believe also is about this. Oh you're oh
34:10
Speaker 1: my god, Ben, you're triggering you right now. I forgot
34:12
Speaker 1: about that. That was so sad. Yeah, I don't remember
34:15
Speaker 1: exactly what happens, but I do remember. Uh it is.
34:18
Speaker 1: It is one of those cough, cough, bloody napkins that
34:22
Speaker 1: you Charlotte fever. That's what it is. Yeah, that's well,
34:26
Speaker 1: let's move on from that. That's terrible. So absolutely, and
34:28
Speaker 1: by the way, and maybe this isn't this isn't like
34:31
Speaker 1: a hot take or something. But I've always wondered, like,
34:33
Speaker 1: why consumption? Why they call it consumption? It's about what
34:36
Speaker 1: you would think. It's called consumption because one of the uh,
34:39
Speaker 1: you know, things that it causes is serious weight loss.
34:43
Speaker 1: So it basically it's almost as though it's like wasting
34:45
Speaker 1: you away or consuming you from within. It's also been
34:48
Speaker 1: known as the white plague. Interesting this is this is
34:54
Speaker 1: p h T H I S I S. I couldn't
34:56
Speaker 1: tell you, but I think you probably I think I
34:58
Speaker 1: think you probably nailed it. And but Ben, surely we've
35:06
Speaker 1: moved past all of this spit hysteria. I mean, first
35:08
Speaker 1: of all, again, you don't walk around seeing people just
35:12
Speaker 1: spitting left and right anymore. Sure you see it occasionally,
35:15
Speaker 1: definitely in the South. You still got your your your
35:18
Speaker 1: your guys that like a little tobacco dip every now
35:21
Speaker 1: and then, which is super gross, but you do you um,
35:24
Speaker 1: just you know, keep put put it in a cup,
35:26
Speaker 1: put it in carry around your speutu flask. You know,
35:28
Speaker 1: that would be a good use for those bring them back.
35:31
Speaker 1: But like you know, there've obviously been medical advances. Tuberculosis
35:34
Speaker 1: is not something you hear about so much anymore, at
35:36
Speaker 1: least in terms of it being a death sentence. Um.
35:39
Speaker 1: There are still anti spinning laws on the books in
35:42
Speaker 1: New York City, which is interesting. That's the thing. In general,
35:46
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like old laws don't get jammed up.
35:49
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. There's a lot of old laws that
35:51
Speaker 1: stay on the book that aren't really enforced. But technically
35:54
Speaker 1: it is on the books in New York City that
35:56
Speaker 1: you are that it is illegal to spit on a sidewalk,
36:00
Speaker 1: on a street or in a park. It's unlawful, um
36:05
Speaker 1: or any and again it's like it's it's very much
36:07
Speaker 1: of the time a wall or stairway, on a floor
36:11
Speaker 1: or of a street or place, or any public or
36:14
Speaker 1: private building or premises used in common by the public,
36:18
Speaker 1: or in or on any public transportation facility. But then,
36:21
Speaker 1: where are we with the medical advances in terms of
36:23
Speaker 1: tuberculosis and where does that disease stand today? Well, I
36:27
Speaker 1: would before we do that, I wanna I want to
36:30
Speaker 1: bring some bring some contemporaneous knowledge to our fellow ridiculous historians,
36:35
Speaker 1: We don't want to vilify saliver spit. If you, as
36:38
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, you're generating two to six cups
36:43
Speaker 1: of spit today, and that's without counting what happens when
36:47
Speaker 1: you eat or chew gum. And you're making the most
36:51
Speaker 1: bit of the day in your mouth right now if
36:53
Speaker 1: you're listening to this in the late afternoon, and your
36:56
Speaker 1: relatively dry mouth if you're listening to it at night.
36:59
Speaker 1: The big epilogue we have to make is this, the
37:03
Speaker 1: anti spitting movement did not manage to stop the spread
37:06
Speaker 1: of TV, and the flask didn't do much either. Uh.
37:10
Speaker 1: The situation wasn't much better twenty years later, UH, leading
37:14
Speaker 1: New York City Mayor John Francis Highland to say, in expector,
37:20
Speaker 1: rating on the sidewalks and in public places is probably
37:23
Speaker 1: the greatest menace to health with which we have to contend.
37:27
Speaker 1: And luckily there was a light at the end of
37:30
Speaker 1: the tubercular tunnel. In a biochemist named Selman Waksman discovered
37:36
Speaker 1: that streptomycin, when isolated from a microbe found in the soil,
37:41
Speaker 1: could be an effective antibiotic for tuberculosis. This research led
37:46
Speaker 1: to him winning the Nobel Prize for his work and uh,
37:51
Speaker 1: you know, providing finally a real treatment against tuberculosis. So
37:57
Speaker 1: hats off to you, Waxman. Uh. No, celebratory spitting. I
38:00
Speaker 1: don't know. Do Is there a culture where people spit
38:03
Speaker 1: celebratory lye like up in the air the way they
38:05
Speaker 1: shoot guns? But then it would ultimately end up falling
38:08
Speaker 1: back down in your own face. It's true, it's all
38:11
Speaker 1: about the angle, you know. I don't know, Ben, but
38:14
Speaker 1: it seems like it certainly could be. So we hope
38:18
Speaker 1: that you have enjoyed today's tail, and we want to
38:21
Speaker 1: hear from you. Should there be anti spitting campaigns in
38:25
Speaker 1: the modern day? Do you live in a in like
38:28
Speaker 1: a what what would be a weird phrase for this?
38:30
Speaker 1: Do you live in a spit rich part of the world?
38:33
Speaker 1: What are people's spitting habits in your neck of the
38:35
Speaker 1: global woods? Uh? Tell us all about it. You can
38:38
Speaker 1: find us on the internet where on Facebook or on Twitter?
38:40
Speaker 1: We're on Instagram, We're on Check out our Facebook page
38:43
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, and say hello to our new mods. No,
38:48
Speaker 1: we have three new mods on the page, so you're
38:52
Speaker 1: sure to run into them and maybe us when you
38:54
Speaker 1: drop by. You can also find us as individuals on
38:57
Speaker 1: the internet, Yes, you can. You can find me on
39:00
Speaker 1: Instagram at how Now Noel Brown. You can find me
39:03
Speaker 1: on Twitter Ben Bolland h s W. You can also
39:07
Speaker 1: message me directly where I am at Ben Bolland on Instagram,
39:12
Speaker 1: Huge Text. Super producer Casey Pegger here in Spirit today
39:15
Speaker 1: along with Christopher haci otis watching down on us from
39:23
Speaker 1: It's time, gentleman, because I said spirit, does that summon you?
39:30
Speaker 1: Did I summon you? Jonathan Strickland a k the Quister Jeez,
39:35
Speaker 1: Happy New Year to YouTube guy. Is is is partying
39:40
Speaker 1: like it's twenty twenty one. Wait a minute, I don't
39:45
Speaker 1: know what year it is. It's been twenty twenty for
39:48
Speaker 1: so long, guys, I feel like been off to a
39:52
Speaker 1: doozy of a start. It's been feeling like a whole
39:55
Speaker 1: years crammed into a couple of weeks. Yeah, it's been
39:58
Speaker 1: been a real hum dinger. As days say. It's I
40:02
Speaker 1: did not come here to spit upon you, although I
40:05
Speaker 1: understand that's what you were talking about, has nothing to
40:07
Speaker 1: do with the subject I picked. By the way, for
40:10
Speaker 1: those unfamiliar with the quiz tip, which is who I
40:16
Speaker 1: am I like to interrupt this podcast on pon occasion
40:19
Speaker 1: and then quiz the gentleman on a series of scenarios,
40:24
Speaker 1: two of which are real, one of which is fake.
40:28
Speaker 1: More made ups He's I don't even remember what I
40:30
Speaker 1: call it anymore made up is excellent. And then and
40:35
Speaker 1: then they have to discover which of the three is
40:38
Speaker 1: the fake, and they get three minutes to do so
40:41
Speaker 1: they can ask me questions. And then here's the thing.
40:44
Speaker 1: For some reason, and I don't know why, the subject
40:48
Speaker 1: of coronations was on my mind. And so the three
40:54
Speaker 1: scenarios i'll present you are related somewhat to coronations. We've
40:59
Speaker 1: been watching Out of the Crown in your quarantine times,
41:03
Speaker 1: I've been watching a lot of a lot of power grabbing.
41:08
Speaker 1: Let's say, yeah, so but this, these are all these
41:14
Speaker 1: are all coordination stories. And of course I give you
41:17
Speaker 1: the permission ask me questions, but you must be an
41:20
Speaker 1: arbitrary rule of my choosing in this episode. That arbitrary
41:24
Speaker 1: rule is that before you ask me any questions, you
41:27
Speaker 1: must preface it by quoting the song You'll be Back
41:31
Speaker 1: from Hamilton's Wow. Literally, you literally can say you'll be
41:35
Speaker 1: back if you don't know the rest of the song
41:37
Speaker 1: or or da da da da dot dot. I'll know
41:41
Speaker 1: what you're going trust me, it is in fact song too.
41:47
Speaker 1: I think he does do it too. If you quote
41:50
Speaker 1: the referees of you'll be back, I will boot you
41:53
Speaker 1: has to be. That has to be the first one.
41:56
Speaker 1: Not so here, oh your three scenarios. The clock will
42:02
Speaker 1: stop start when I finished the last one. Guys, I
42:05
Speaker 1: haven't had enough coffee. How are you go? A little ninny?
42:09
Speaker 1: I could use another cup myself and I'll do it. Okay,
42:14
Speaker 1: I'm high to our office. I fill up this milk
42:16
Speaker 1: jug with coffee and then I drink it out of
42:19
Speaker 1: this out of this mug. Oh, there's an audio podcast,
42:23
Speaker 1: so you guys can't see the text. It's a tech
42:26
Speaker 1: stuff mug. It's all right, So that might be a
42:32
Speaker 1: made up season. So it's you, no, No, you know what, man.
42:34
Speaker 1: I appreciate the sci op that you're doing asking Noel
42:39
Speaker 1: and I how we're doing. But you're not fooling us.
42:41
Speaker 1: We know the rules. We've still got that gigantic clock
42:44
Speaker 1: in the background. That's why I'm in the office today.
42:46
Speaker 1: We've got what three minutes three minutes after you do
42:49
Speaker 1: your bit Okay, Noel, I think we're one down. Actually,
42:53
Speaker 1: is that correct? If I relieve so? I believe so.
42:56
Speaker 1: So now you get a chance to tie it all
42:58
Speaker 1: up once again. And I I have faith in you, boys,
43:01
Speaker 1: So just let you know I'm pulling for you. I
43:06
Speaker 1: really am. Here. Here are your three scenarios. I will
43:10
Speaker 1: let you know when I am finished. Here we are
43:12
Speaker 1: Scenario number one. The oldest piece of coronation regalia still
43:17
Speaker 1: used in England from the twelfth century, is casually called
43:21
Speaker 1: the coronation gravy boat. It is a spouted bowl made
43:25
Speaker 1: out of gold and used to anoint the ascending sovereign
43:28
Speaker 1: in the ceremony with holy oil, and it escaped destruction
43:32
Speaker 1: and is still used in coronation services today Scenario too.
43:37
Speaker 1: Out of all the monarchs of England, only two have
43:40
Speaker 1: never had a coronation. One was King Edward the Five,
43:44
Speaker 1: who missed his coronation due to being a tad bit
43:47
Speaker 1: abducted by his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester. The second
43:50
Speaker 1: was another Edward Eddie the Eight, who abdicated the throne
43:54
Speaker 1: after ascending it but several months before his coronation was
43:58
Speaker 1: to occur. Scenario three. In the short span of years.
44:02
Speaker 1: Between eighteen eighty one and nineteen forty seven, Romania was
44:07
Speaker 1: a kingdom and followed the tradition of holding coronations, but
44:10
Speaker 1: the monarch's crown was not to be made of gold
44:13
Speaker 1: or silver or some other precious metal. No, the crown
44:16
Speaker 1: of Romania was made of steel. Moreover, that steel king
44:20
Speaker 1: courtesy of a cannon the Romanian army captured from the
44:23
Speaker 1: Ottoman Empire during Romania's War of Independence. Start the clock, Okay,
44:29
Speaker 1: I'm running for the clock and go ben. That was
44:34
Speaker 1: a heroic leap. Okay, my friend, let's see gravy boat.
44:37
Speaker 1: I'm gonna count out. Do you think that one's fake?
44:41
Speaker 1: It feels fake to me. Gravy boat Okay, yeah, because
44:43
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest with you. Man, I have I
44:45
Speaker 1: have no uh, I am flying blind here, nol um
44:50
Speaker 1: can I can really quickly? I want to say. I
44:52
Speaker 1: feel like a gravy boat is a relatively modern invention.
44:58
Speaker 1: Not modern modern, but like I don't know that with
45:00
Speaker 1: they would have been like uh in the zeitgeist enough
45:03
Speaker 1: to have like a royal one and do do do
45:06
Speaker 1: do do the royalty really ever eat gravy I don't know.
45:09
Speaker 1: Maybe they do. Would somebody be anointed with oil in
45:12
Speaker 1: the modern day because this is still in use from
45:15
Speaker 1: oh hang on, when you're gone, I'll go mad? Excellent,
45:20
Speaker 1: Mr Bolin, thank you. Yes a question? So, uh, first
45:24
Speaker 1: off by questions, how's that song go? Because I'm totally
45:27
Speaker 1: off tune there. But but the question, uh, when you
45:32
Speaker 1: for scenario number one, when you say this, uh, this
45:36
Speaker 1: thing is still in use? Is still like in this scenario,
45:40
Speaker 1: is it's still used to pour oil on people during coronation.
45:43
Speaker 1: It is still used to anoint holy oil to the
45:47
Speaker 1: sovereign and it is only currently called the gravy boat.
45:55
Speaker 1: So it's more referring to the shape of it. You
45:58
Speaker 1: know what I know it oil anointing is a thing
46:01
Speaker 1: that goes on during coronations. Now, now you got me
46:06
Speaker 1: flipped on this one. You got me flipped, Jonathan. Yes, So,
46:16
Speaker 1: uh was Romania kingdom before the time period you mentioned
46:20
Speaker 1: it was part of the Ultimate Empire, so it's not
46:23
Speaker 1: okay m hm hm h quick recap on number two please,
46:37
Speaker 1: So that that was that there are only two monarchs
46:39
Speaker 1: of England who never had a coronation. One was Edward
46:42
Speaker 1: the five because he was abducted by the Duke of Gloucester,
46:44
Speaker 1: and one was Edward the Eighth, who abdicated the throne
46:47
Speaker 1: after he ascended the throne, but before his actual coronation.
46:51
Speaker 1: That one feels plausible to the third one had to
46:56
Speaker 1: do with steel. Yes, steel, crown room. M I you
47:01
Speaker 1: know what, Okay, I don't know how this is gonna go,
47:06
Speaker 1: nol but we've got twenty four seconds. I'm gonna say
47:09
Speaker 1: scenario one just because I'm with you, all right, let's
47:12
Speaker 1: lock it in three two one blocked rights. You have
47:23
Speaker 1: solved my coronation puzzle. In fact, the oldest piece of
47:28
Speaker 1: coronation regalia is the ceremonial spoon, which is used to
47:32
Speaker 1: anoint the sovereign with holy oil. The reason why it's
47:37
Speaker 1: the oldest, by the way, is because all the other
47:40
Speaker 1: pieces of traditional coronation regalia were destroyed when Oliver Cromwell
47:46
Speaker 1: assumed the role of Lord Protector of England, and thus
47:49
Speaker 1: were all destroyed except for the one spoon, which still
47:53
Speaker 1: is a piece of the coronation regalia to this day.
47:57
Speaker 1: So you you just you had invented the royal gravy,
48:00
Speaker 1: but I did. That was good. That was a good one,
48:03
Speaker 1: very good. But then you flew you I have I
48:05
Speaker 1: thought that was the fake one to begin with, and
48:07
Speaker 1: then you flipped it. You flipped it on. You got me.
48:09
Speaker 1: You got me because I realized. I realized that if
48:13
Speaker 1: I had worded it so that today we call it
48:16
Speaker 1: the gravy boat as opposed to the way I had
48:19
Speaker 1: worded it, that perhaps it would have tripped you up
48:21
Speaker 1: a bit more. And that's what Well, I've got an
48:24
Speaker 1: opportunity here. They didn't ask this question, but I'm going
48:26
Speaker 1: to slip it in anyways, devious as always, well done, sir,
48:32
Speaker 1: Still great scenarios and I'm happy to be even Stevens again.
48:36
Speaker 1: So I guess that means we have to have you back,
48:38
Speaker 1: you know, before too too terribly long to give you
48:41
Speaker 1: a chance to earn back your title as the most
48:45
Speaker 1: what is it cringe worthy segment and is correct? That
48:49
Speaker 1: is correct? And if we haven't proved it this time,
48:52
Speaker 1: I do not know what will. Well, I've got to see.
48:54
Speaker 1: I've got to see Jonathan um be candid with you.
48:59
Speaker 1: We were flying mind in that one. Yeah, we lucked
49:02
Speaker 1: out on a thirty percent chance because fortune favors the
49:05
Speaker 1: foolish sometimes, but fav beside it is an absolute pleasure
49:10
Speaker 1: to see one man. You're doing all right? Uh? Mostly yes, mostly, yes,
49:16
Speaker 1: we're struggling by just like everybody else, just hanging in
49:20
Speaker 1: there as best we can and keeping spirits up as
49:22
Speaker 1: best we can. Well, also trying to be as responsible
49:25
Speaker 1: as possible despite the fact that I am the farious
49:27
Speaker 1: and evil. I don't, you know, want to make anyone sick.
49:30
Speaker 1: So I'm staying at Yeah, because he used to spit
49:33
Speaker 1: a lot, dude, used to listen, I've been spitting this.
49:38
Speaker 1: Why do you think I have the screen and from
49:40
Speaker 1: the microphone. It's not it's not to protect against the plosives.
49:44
Speaker 1: It's literally otherwise I have to dry out my mic
49:47
Speaker 1: every day. It's disgusting. Yeah, Jonathan's house is every room
49:52
Speaker 1: is fitted with the golden crusted, bejeweled spittoons. Yes, it's
49:56
Speaker 1: the Prince of Flim is what they call me? Or
49:59
Speaker 1: we're those were what was the other word? We learned
50:01
Speaker 1: today old cuspidors doors. So we can't wait to run
50:09
Speaker 1: into you and have a battle of the wits again.
50:13
Speaker 1: Jonathan Stricklands a k a. The Quister. But in the meantime,
50:17
Speaker 1: while people are waiting for you to once again emerge
50:20
Speaker 1: and ambush us on our own show. By the way,
50:22
Speaker 1: where can they find you, Jonathan, Well, you can find
50:26
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, that is at John Strickland j O n.
50:30
Speaker 1: You can listen to tech Stuff, the technology podcast I do.
50:34
Speaker 1: That is now five times a week, and you can
50:37
Speaker 1: listen also to Large New Drunk Collider, a new podcast
50:41
Speaker 1: that looks at all geeky things and we do crazy mashups,
50:44
Speaker 1: the most recent of which is the Matrix meets Super
50:48
Speaker 1: Mario Brothers. Interesting. Who's Luigi? What Luigi would be? Morpheus? Yes, dope,
50:55
Speaker 1: you have Agent Bowser played by Dennis Hopper. Of course, yes, yes,
51:00
Speaker 1: of course you have to check it out. Folks, don't
51:02
Speaker 1: take our word for it. Uh. Tech Stuff and Large
51:06
Speaker 1: Nerve Drawing Collider are more than worth your time. You
51:09
Speaker 1: can see Jonathan where he's not quite always a villain.
51:13
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that's sound fair, nol? What do
51:14
Speaker 1: you think it does? Sound fair? He has tinges of
51:17
Speaker 1: villainy that popped through, but he has a little bit
51:19
Speaker 1: of a kindler gentler Jonathan strictly, so you know, we'll
51:22
Speaker 1: go ahead and start with you. John, Thanks so much
51:24
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Huge thanks to Jonathan Strictly
51:27
Speaker 1: and the Quister. Big thanks to Christopher Hasciots and Casey Pagraham,
51:31
Speaker 1: super producer here in spirit both Alex Williams, who composed
51:35
Speaker 1: our theme. Big big thanks to Eve's Jeff co Big
51:38
Speaker 1: big thanks to our research associate, who is on the
51:44
Speaker 1: forefront of expectorant policy in these United States. Are very
51:49
Speaker 1: own gay Louisa and uh No, thanks to you man.
51:54
Speaker 1: I think I think we learned a lot of a
51:58
Speaker 1: very gross stuff today. Yeah, we navigated these spitty waters
52:02
Speaker 1: quite well, my friend, and we didn't even um throw
52:05
Speaker 1: up in our mouths once. You know, I spat a little.
52:08
Speaker 1: I think case you let it it out. We'll see
52:10
Speaker 1: you next. Tip books. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
52:21
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
52:23
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.